Once, soothsays Hanson, you could criticize Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzalez without being accused of racism. You might think this was because they were self-evident monsters and buffoons, but Hanson thinks it was because of the Bush golden age of racial tolerance.
But "Obama changed that calculus and equated his own popularity with a referendum on racial harmony," says Hanson, by noticing Trayvon Martin and Henry Louis Gates. "The result is a creeping racial polarization that we have not seen in fifty years."
Even more horrible -- Obama spurred black celebrities to race war on his own behalf, thereby costing them their popularity with unnamed, uncounted white people:
Before Obama, the billionaire Oprah Winfrey was a national icon. Morgan Freeman had transcended race and resented identity politics. A Kanye West or Chris Rock made millions of dollars by appealing to suburbanites. All have lost their broad appeal, largely due to some of the most polarizing racial rhetoric in memory...If only there were some way to back up this assertion. Maybe a time-based analysis of magazine covers at the supermarket check-out?
A Jamie Foxx or Chris Rock casually derogates “white people”; does that mean either wishes them not to go to their movies or shows?...Neither is this "more" identified or quantified, but maybe they're the real reason Yeezus sales dropped in the second week; it took the downtrodden whites several days to figure out Kanye was one of those black racists. If African American showfolk don't start mending their ways, Victor Davis Hanson and his cousins won't let them have any more People's Choice Awards.
The net result of the new racialism is an impossible situation of establishing one’s racial fides only by permanent support for Barack Obama — and because it is impossible, more are resenting those who imposed it.
"Before Obama, the billionaire Oprah Winfrey was a national icon. Morgan
ReplyDeleteFreeman had transcended race and resented identity politics. A Kanye
West or Chris Rock made millions of dollars by appealing to
suburbanites."
Christ on a cracker. Someone should send Hanson this link: http://www.reddit.com/r/ThanksObama
Makes you wanna steal a chainsaw, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteWell, Oprah's off TV, Kanye's got a bigger ego than Prince and Donald Trump put together, Morgan Freeman somehow convinced himself that Last Vegas and Oblivion were good uses of his time, Chris Rock's always been like that, and Jamie Foxx apologized for telling race jokes on SNL and at a few awards shows, the cad. As you can see, VDH, there are many explanations that don't lead back to a Trash Whitey Conspiracy that they didn't let you in on.
ReplyDeleteBut while we're on the topic of Jamie Foxx, he looks like a good candidate for next year's Golden Skree Awards, Outstanding Achievements in Evoking Fears of Race War: the Daddy Warbucks role in a mostly black version of Annie (Wingnuts: "You're black. Orphans are white."), Electro in the new Spider-Man ("Electro is white, goddammit!" - Every comic book fan who normally barely cares about race, but for whatever reason flips their shit when the casting doesn't exactly match the comic book) and the title role in a future Martin Luther King biopic, directed by Oliver Stone and produced by Spielberg. Woo! Maybe Hanson's just warming up for the next Two Year Hate. Foreshadowing, I think brainiacs like himself call it.
I'll never forget the day when Chris Rock's race free jokes about who can say the N word and who qualifies as one retroactively became racially polarizing because his association with Obama.
ReplyDeleteIf you're scratching your head as to when "a Jamie Foxx" casually derogated "white people", it was in an SNL monologue about getting revenge on the sadistic slave-owners in Django Unchained (NRO come for the race-baiting in the post, stay for the troglodyte racism in the comments). So a mild bit about fictionalized vengeance in the slave-owning south gets shoved into one end of the Wingnut Wurlitzer (or perhaps rammed down it's throat, as they say) and out the other end emerges a grand theory of new racialism in the age of Obama. Come to think of it, that's pretty much par for the course.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, fear our new zombie negro overlords. I'm typing this from under the bed, and its damned crowded what with the entire staff of the NRO under here. And smelly.
ReplyDeleteHad the AP, IRS, or NSA scandals occurred during the Bush second term, congressional Democrats would have been calling for impeachment
ReplyDeleteUh, the NSA scandal did happen in Bush's second term, and nobody called for impeachment.
There is simply so much factually wrong with this essay it's dizzying. It is one false or unfounded claim after another, a tour de force of wingnut mythology delivered appropriately by a classics professor, to which the racial stuff has been grafted on, possibly in an attempt to inoculate himself and his tribe against a charge of racism for delivering a litany of complaints about programs and practices and problems that either originated under Bush, were worse when he was in office, or are a result of his policies.
Shorter Jefferson Davis Hardon: "Spying, signing statements, refusing to enforce or defend aspects of laws, expansion of presidential power, and a shitty economy - did you know that Obama invented these? And that his army of celebrity blacks will shout you down for noticing it?"
One never really considered VDH to be an aficionado of the plebeian culture. Has he hidden shallows of which we were unaware?
ReplyDeleteThe hatred of Foxx makes perfect sense if you follow their logic which is something like: "Nothing is about race. So slavery wasn't about race (there were black slavers too). Thus, anyone who would want to kill white slavers, even in a movie, is racist because Obama."
ReplyDeleteIf you deny that conclusion, it is because you are a race hustler.
You know, Dave Chappelle's career hasn't recovered either. Thanks a lot, racist Obama.
ReplyDeleteOr drive a battered pickup across a carefully tended acreage with an illegal farm worker in the passenger seat, maybe knocking over a fake-marble Cato in the process.
ReplyDeleteThis is some IMAX-worthy projection.
After Obama, one of two things will happen: either the presidency will be redefined as a sort of super-executive that can both make and enforce statutes
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, will happen? I believe it was the C- Cincinnatus who argued for the unitary executive.
If African American showfolk don't start mending their ways, Victor
ReplyDeleteDavis Hanson and his cousins won't let them have any more People's
Choice Awards.
I'm pretty sure Mr. McQueen isn't staying up late waiting to hear what Victor Davis Hanson thought of Twelve Years A Slave.
Kanye West is the most preposterous one in the list. Seriously, Hanson? Kanye "George Bush doesn't care about black people" West was a paragon of racial unity in the last administration?
ReplyDeleteA couple more things, because all of this is truly hilarious to me:
ReplyDeleteThe result is a creeping racial polarization that we have not seen in fifty years.
Fifty years ago was the height of the Civil Rights Movement. So things haven't been this bad since black people decided that they deserved equal representation? Dude, I don't think you're supposed to say those things out loud.
The president weighed in against the police in the Professor Gates psychodrama, and de facto against George Zimmerman, a defendant in the Trayvon Martin shooting.
This one's pretty shopworn, but I finally realized why it chafes me so much. In the conservative reckoning, the current President mentioning two high-profile cases in speeches is an irredeemable intrusion into affairs that aren't his business. But the previous President inserting himself into one family's private medical concerns to the point that he was proposing new laws just so that he'd have the authority fuck around in their affairs? Totally okay.
And one more that's a bit of a pet issue:
[T]he legacy of Obama’s foreign policy may well be...serial clashes in the China seas...
Okay, what the fuck does Obama have to do with the Senkaku Islands dispute? Look, Hanson, I know damn well that you weren't even aware of this until our wonderful newsmedia started reporting on it a few weeks ago. Don't even pretend that you understand the underlying issues enough to make that call, asshole.
The Obama years. A dark stain on America's previously unsullied record of racial tolerance.
ReplyDeleteAccording to ol' VD, signing statements are retroactively not a big deal because Eric Holder said the DoJ wouldn't uphold the Defense of Marriage Act.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's progress of a sort. Hanson's probably the first con to admit that President Bush was making up laws on the fly.
The president weighed in [...] de facto
ReplyDelete"De facto" is doing a lot of work there. It doesn't matter whether Obama has personally weighed in, or used actual words or actions; it is as if he weighed in, and only a pettifogging quibbler would insist on details.
I'm pretty sure Mr. McQueen isn't staying up late waiting to hear what Victor Davis Hanson thought of Twelve Years A Slave.
ReplyDeleteI just finished eating some pizza and drinking beer so I feel warm and full and contented, and really too lazy to write a joke. Here are all the parts, Somebody should assemble it: Megyn Kelly insisting Santa is white, Steve McQueen, The Great Escape, 12 Years a Slave.
Before Obama s Morgan Freeman was crushing bitches in every film because there was no white discomfort with a sexual black man. Since Obama? Not a bang.
ReplyDeleteI would like to drink to the health of this comment by downing a shot-glass of Robitussin.
ReplyDeletehey anybody remember why was there racial polarization fifty years ago?
ReplyDeleteVDU would be very aware of the saying about history being written by the winners (or maybe he's not, maybe his cow college gave away history degrees with quarts of chainsaw lube) so it appears he's doing the old switcheroo and writing history by the losers. Brilliant outflanking move General, or would have been if there hadn't been that cliff there.
ReplyDeleteSo, his contention is that race relations are as bad as they were in 1963, before the passage of the civil rights act.
ReplyDeleteAnd his other contention is that Kanye "George Bush does not care about black people" West has only become political since the Obama administration.
I'm not sure I agree 100 percent on your police work there, Hanson.
UC Santa Cruz is not a cow college. Well, except for the cows in the fields.
ReplyDeleteto which the racial stuff has been grafted on
ReplyDeletegrifted on
Sure, I haven't seen Morgan Freeman much recently either. But when you make a threat, you have to make sure you're ready to follow up on it, or you just look foolish and toothless. (Wisdom toothless, presumably, given the foolishness.) So, VDH, are you SURE that since Obama, NO ONE will cast Morgan Freeman's clear, calming tenor baritone (I assume; I don't THINK he's a bass) as the President, God, or another combination Look How Progressive We Are For Putting A Black Person In A Position Of Absolute Authority and Actually This Makes Perfect Sense Because Morgan Freeman Is Genuinely Cool And Has An Excellent Voice role? Because if you're not sure, you shouldn't threaten. Your credibility might suffer.
ReplyDeleteActually, on that note, carry on. Maybe it'll roll over the bit data and end up at 255. Can't hurt to try, right?
Before we all jump on VDH for writing yet another astonishingly ill-informed and poorly reasoned column, we must remember how difficult it is to read source material when you have your head up your ass. It really constructs the view.
ReplyDeleteSimple. Obama's time machine. He went back and stirred the previously docile black population up against their white bet... er, neighbors.
ReplyDeletePoor STD Hanson just can't help himself...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slapcaption.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/B-Negative-Grumpy-Cat.jpg
~
For Hanson, "establishing one's racial fides" means showing how his pointy head fits perfectly into a white hood. It's why he's so great at parties.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of creeping racial polarization, Hanson's comments section is robust. I think my favorite is MB4's 400-word stilted screed against the "Race Card":
It resembles a witch hunt and is, in plain and clear fact, similar to a lynching. (author's emphasis)
Not so much creeping as creepy.
But if you DO bring this up, the PJ Media flying monkeys will be all "There you Libs go, blaming Bush for EVERYTHING again. Can't you just move on to the atrocities WE think are important?!?"
ReplyDeleteThe net result of the new racialism is an impossible situation of establishing one’s racial fides only by permanent support for Barack Obama — and because it is impossible, more are resenting those who imposed it.
ReplyDeleteThere must be an alternate universe in which this indictment actually makes sense. In this imaginary land, American whites who had long contented themselves with being second-class citizens under the hereditary black monarchy (because that's just the kind of good people they were, always willing to go that extra mile to keep the social contract intact) finally began stirring themselves to rebellion when Emperor Hussein-Obama issued the new "correct thought" decrees requiring the forswearing of "white deviationism" (manifestations of which included failing to stand to attention while singing the Trayvon Martin Lied, and upvoting Justin Bieber videos on YouTube).
C'mon, now--you can't expect military historian Victor Davis Hanson to actually know or understand any military history more recent than 250BCE.
ReplyDeleteThat the South China Sea has been at the top of the U.S. Navy and Air Force lists of "Most Likely Future War Zone" should be known to anyone who's paid even vague attention to American military doctrine for the last 30 years. Hell, we've even developed a whole new class of ships and warfighting ("Littoral Combat Vessels") explicitly to fight in the South China Sea.
That Davis doesn't know this calls all of his scholarship into question. If he does know this and merely ignores it to score political points invalidates all of his scholarship.
KATRINA IS OBAMA'S KATRINA.
ReplyDeleteIf the dispute over Quemoy and Matsu flares up again, it'll be all the Kenyan Usurper's fault.
ReplyDeleteSee also:
ReplyDeleteDick "Fourth Branch of Government" Cheney.
Morgan Freeman had transcended race and resented identity politics.
ReplyDeleteYet he still couldn't successfully hail a cab.
Hey now, it took a lot of slave labor to dig that memory hole!
ReplyDeleteWingnuts have managed over the years to water down "lynching" to the point where it's so-called victims aren't even required to die anymore.
ReplyDeleteHell, the dispute between Mothra and Ghidorah was Obama's fault.
ReplyDelete" For an adolescent to dream of cradle-to-grave entitlements and utopian peace, there must be an adult to ensure free markets and military preparedness."
ReplyDeleteJeezus... Ya gotta love how VDH is convinced that a link to Jonah Goldberg solidifies his argument. When Hanson is around, no straw man is safe.
you can't expect military historian Victor Davis Hanson to actually know or understand any military history
ReplyDeleteFull stop. If any of his "scholarly" works are actually any good, they were written by his students, because he repeatedly gives the impression of someone who couldn't find Greece on a map of the Balkan Peninsula.
Please. He puts the Okefenokee to shame.
ReplyDeleteBefore Obama, no-one would have thought twice about Rihanna being beaten out for a Soul/R&B music award by Justin Timberlake. Before Obama, Justin Timberlake mocking Rihanna's mother's accent while accepting a prior Soul/R&B award would have been taken in the spirit it was clearly intended. Before Obama, none of this would have been made the butt of a joke by Sarah Silverman(!). Yet thanks to that uppity appeaser-in-chief, it's somehow all about race. What's next, injecting race into apartheid... Shit, I've done that one already.
ReplyDeleteOne wonders if military preparedness is enough or if it has to be a grotesquely bloated defense budget larger than the combined budgets of a dozen or so of the next most powerful military nations on the planet. Is it only the twelfth aircraft carrier group that permits an adolescent to dream of cradle to grave entitlements or would like eight be enough?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that adolescents can dream of whatever they please without an adult ensuring a thing. Certainly the adults that VDH tries to appeal to aren't all that interested in ensuring anything for anyone other than themselves. Hell,the free market as VDH understands it, is actively hostile to 'cradle to grave entitlements'. It sure wasn't Wall Street occupying Wall Street to focus attention on income inequality, and rapacious looting of the American (and world) economy by barely regulated capitalism.
Let's rewrite his quote: "For an adolescent to dream of cradle-to-grave entitlements and utopian peace, there must be an adult to stomp on that dream, and make sure the only options available to that kid feed the war machine or the investment portfolios of his betters"
Heh. On a Science channel blurb over their programming next week, they said 'hosted by Jenny (redhead girl from Mythbusters) and God (showing Morgan Freeman)'. Even better, it was delivered in a Jersey accent, 'hostid by Jenny and Gawd'.
ReplyDeleteHow odd. It's been nearly a month since I've been randomly stopped and asked to prove my "racial fides" by showing my Obama card (it says "I love Barack" on one side and "Black people rule, white people drool" on the other.) This is quite sinister. Our black overlords must be planning something.
ReplyDeleteOh, but yes! Fifty years ago, everything was sweetness and light. Just ask Norman Rockwell: http://abagond.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/norman-rockwell-the-problem-we-all-live-with1.jpg
ReplyDelete" a creeping racial polarization that we have not seen in fifty years."
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean "we," white man?
They're not even required to be victims. What Clarence Thomas called a "high-tech lynching" the non-mendacious, non-Republican world called "a job interview."
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get me started on the uproar of casting a black girl as Rue from the Hunger Games. Racial intolerance, it's not just for the olds anymore!
ReplyDeleteI'd rather burn down some vineyards.
ReplyDeleteKanye "Imma let you finish" West has a long history of never talking about race.
ReplyDeleteWell, there is that doughy pantload down there with them.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking for the citation that Morgan Freeman ever said anything that could be interpreted as "resenting identity politics." VDH keeps putting words in peoples' mouths that I suspect they never uttered.
ReplyDeleteBefore Obama, the billionaire Oprah Winfrey was a national icon. Morgan
ReplyDeleteFreeman had transcended race and resented identity politics. A Kanye
West or Chris Rock made millions of dollars by appealing to
suburbanites. All have lost their broad appeal, largely due to some of
the most polarizing racial rhetoric in memory.
So, since Obama, Oprah is squatting in the cold cinders of the campfire? Morgan Freeman has once again become racial (not sure how exactly one reverses transcending something) and now embraces identity politics? Really? Kanye and Chris are no longer raking in the bucks? And all because President Obama said that a cop in Boston did something stupid, or that the victim of a yet-uninvestigated shooting could have been his son?
Of course, there couldn't be any other factor that might cause changes in the careers of people who depend on fame and celebrity over a period of five years, hmm? Oprah's starring role in a major studio feature film and Kanye West's liaison with a famous white girl are clearly the results of President Obama's anti-white racism.
A Kanye West or Chris Rock made millions of dollars by appealing to
ReplyDeletesuburbanites. All have lost their broad appeal, largely due to some of
the most polarizing racial rhetoric in memory
Um. Chris Rock lost his "appeal" because he's trying to make the same pivot Woody Allen made from standup to auteur and semi-dramatic actor, not because he got more ooga-booga. I'm not sure it's working out, but he's a genius and I'll give him a pass on most anything.
Kanye West made a difficult, damn near electroclash hip-hop album after he went through a Portishead phase. He's loopy and maybe isht has gone to his head, but like Chris Rock, he pretty much reached the peak of his profession and now he's messing around, because he can.
By the way, VDH, you may want to check exactly how black artists have made millions of dollars by appealing to suburbanites over the past three decades. I recommend starting with NWA; that might put early Kanye into context.
That Davis doesn't know this calls all of his scholarship into question.
ReplyDeleteWell, at this point scholarship is more a bullet point for VDH. Yes, the PRC has had maritime territorial disputes for a long time even before the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute; yes, they've been building up their navy in a way that's given our own armed forces no end of concern. But did Hanson know any of this? Or did he just read an article about Chinese belligerence and think "ammunition"?
Honestly, I'm surprised more cons haven't tried to pull this one. I guess most of them still have tunnel vision for Iran.
Go banana slugs!
ReplyDeleteJust checked Mr. Freeman's filmography at Wikipedia. Since 2009, he's got 21 film credits to his name. So, yeah, Obama made his career tank.
ReplyDeleteWhat did they ever do to you? Just deport VDH to a country where he'll be happy....though I'm not sure I want to dwell on the things that would make VDH happy....on second thought, let's send him to Sweden. I doubt Anders Brevik gets a lot of visitors, and being lectured on the classics would probably be a nice change of pace.
ReplyDeleteand de facto against George Zimmerman, a defendant in the Trayvon Martin shooting
ReplyDeleteWhen the President "weighed in" on the Trayvon Martin shooting, George Zimmerman wasn't a defendant. That was the whole point of why the President commented - that there was no investigation.
http://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-vs-neocon-knucklehead-victor-davis-hanson-a-war-nerd-classic/
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Kanye is buying diamonds in Paris for a famous white girl is proof that Obama has turned him into a Mau-Mau.
ReplyDeleteI recently went back and listened to Rock's first comedy album, Born Suspect, and...really, Hanson? You think his material is more racial than that? You didn't get that when he played a racially aware prophet in Dogma that this was maybe poking a bit of fun at his public persona?
ReplyDeleteCan't believe I'm sticking up for VDH, but that's overly harsh. His academic work pre-2001 is solid. There's stuff that I consider wrong, but it's mostly wrong in a regular, room-for-disagreement kind of way. It's only with "Who Killed Homer" and his subsequent post-9/11 material that his scholarly profile went off the deep end.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, I fondly remember the dreams of my adolescent years, when I would purloin my dad's copies of Playboy and feverishly flip through the pages searching for articles on Social Security and Medicare.
ReplyDeleteSenkaku Islands are much more in the East China Sea than the South China Sea. They are east- offshore of Taiwan.
ReplyDeleteI am learning the geography of the various China Seas
I would like to fall with this comment into a radiation fueled volcano.
ReplyDeleteBasically, if a black person is doing it to a white person, "Hi, how are you" is a lynching, if it isn't said in a friendly enough way.
ReplyDeleteYou could have stopped at "you didn't get it..."
ReplyDeleteI think this is pretty lousy wingnuttery by Hanson here. He doesn't know enough about the subject matter even to fabricate in any interesting way. He knows the names of some of the cast members, but he doesn't know enough to make them move; he leaves that up to the reader. A good wingnut should be crazy, ambitious, venal and also possess some kind of knowledge or experience related to his subject. I'll give Hason 1 out of 4, the Goldberg Standard.
ReplyDeletegets shoved into one end of the Wingnut Wurlitzer
ReplyDeleteI imagine it as a version of Delvoye's Cloaca Machine.
The net result of the new racialism
ReplyDeleteStill with the code words yet. "Racialism" is to the more racist Conservatives what "Central Government" is to the more "2nd American Revolution"-oriented types (although, granted, there's a ton of overlap). Can't tell the wingnuts apart without a program...
an adult to ensure free markets
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like an admission that a free market is not a natural state to which any society evolves in the absence of pressure, but rather a result of choices and legislation and policing, which will collapse into corruption and oligarchy if those interventions stop. Which seems true enough, but is interesting coming from VDH. A libertarian might wonder, if a "free market" requires so much non-free intervention, do we really want it?
Strangely, the people who complained - quite erroneously, as you know - about Rue's "change" in skin color weren't complaining when Khan became pasty white in Star Trek Into Darkness.
ReplyDeleteIdris Elba can be anything the fuck he wants as far as I'm concerned. They could cast Idris Elba as George Washington and I wouldn't complain. Because Idris Elba.
ReplyDeleteThis: youtube.com/watch?v=DM4-r4pN1PY
ReplyDeleteVDH is echoing Orwell here on "sleeping peacefully in our beds because rough men blah blah", but rewording it to sound even more pompous.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but most legit military experts believe that the PRC's first step would be to seize control of territorial waters closer to the Phillipine Islands, farther to the south. Despite common conceptions, it's unlikely that China would go after the ROC or Japan first.
ReplyDeleteCradle-to-grave entitlements like food, shelter, healthcare and security in old age?
ReplyDeleteGod DAMN those grasping, selfish adolescents.
I for one am happy that the Hansons of the world will always be ready to provide them with the war, disease and deprivation they should be pining for.
They really, really, believe that. I have arguments with people online about this all the time. White people voting for Obama in the Democratic party have made it incredibly uncomfortable for white people who voted for Romney, or McCain. Because they know in their hearts they always hate the Democrat. They don't hate Obama more than they always hate the feminized, muslimized, traitorous, hippy, Dem running this year. They hate him just normalsized. So they hate Obama and his voters all the more because he makes them feel all sad and objectified and stereotyped because they had to vote for Romney/MCcain/RandPaul or whoever and they find themselves in the racist corral with all the other people who accidentally voted for those guys in order to avoid voting for the black guy.
ReplyDeleteWhen Democrats, women, or black people have identities that's politicized.
ReplyDeleteYou know who else was NOT a racialist? (Answer at 5:30)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmGknvr_Pg
Nonsense. Credibility is a signed byte, so it rolls over from -127 to +128.
ReplyDeleteHeck, I can even remember the spring of 2001, when Bill Kristol wanted the US to go to war with China over the airplane that crashed on Hainan Island. Ever since then, I've wanted to see somebody ask him, do you think we'd have been better off if we'd have picked a fight four months before 9/11?
ReplyDeleteClassicist that he is, he wants young people to experience "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" first hand.
ReplyDelete(not sure how exactly one reverses transcending something)
ReplyDeleteAsk Daniel Jackson...
Ooh--rough men? . I don't think I can sleep peacefully now that you've put it that way.
ReplyDeleteLet's change it to "rough trade", then.
ReplyDeleteThe (original) words are not Orwell's per se, but a Washington Times columnist summarising Orwell's opinions -- then attributed directly to Orwell by (no surprises) a NRO screeder, and George Will. Because honesty.
Then later re-attributed to Churchill, by another link in the centipede NRO writer.
The opposite of 'transcend' is obvs 'ciscend'. Right?
ReplyDeleteLets admit that Orwell was the original "dirty deeds, done dirt cheap" guy. Or maybe I'm confusing him with Chuck Norris?
ReplyDeleteThank you. I know you posted that comment just to pave the conversational way for Dildonics. But I have a headache tonight.
ReplyDeleteThe conversational path to Dildonics is paved with SHUT UP SMUT
ReplyDeleteOh boy, nice Googlin. It's weird to me that anyone can be racist in the way that VDH is -- the way where you are angry at black people for doing something yet can't cite one clear example of them doing it; where you put "white people" in quotes like it is not a group that really exists (arguably true!) but at the same time casually say "a Jamie Foxx or Chris Rock" as if they are only proxies for a group defined only by being famous, angry, and black (which he argues is proxy for a much larger group: not famous, angry, and black). It should be obvious to VDH that Foxx & Rock have careers marked by distinct genius such that his use of them is akin to saying "a Jerry Seinfeld or George Clooney" to indicate all white people. I suspect VDH wouldn't say that because it's not so easy for him to elide white individuals into the category "white people" -- their creativity and agency have strong enough presence in his imagination that they resist simple grouping and representing. To look at Chris Rock and not see that same irreducible individuality, that right there is the stuff of racism.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's the anxiety that freaks out conservatives -- "All I did was say a Chris Rock and you cry racism?? That's crazy, YOU'RE the racist for seeing race in every little thing!" But it's not a little thing -- it shows a mind not really tackling race in a serious way, which is to say from a point of view other than its own.
I'd suggest that a lot of these guys' would agree to sum up their thoughts on race with the statement "They vote, so we're equal, and I think that's as it should be." That is arguably a fairly racist statement, but I bet these guys wouldn't see how and wouldn't spend a minute trying to see; I bet they'd feel that declaring it actually vindicates them against all charges. "I just said I believe we're equal! What more do you people want from me?!"
Well, that self-vindication is fragile and usually cracks under real-world testing. Hence panic attacks like VDH's. Which, per your Googling, smut clyde, began even before testing. Fragiler and fragiler -- sure, Obama exacerbated tensions in racists' perception of America. But the evidence points to that being the only place.
"Cheetos, dustbunnies, same diff"
ReplyDeleteBecause Kanye is also from Chicago, which means that he is Saul Alinsky's terrorist grandson. QED.
ReplyDeleteObama exacerbated tensions in racists' perception of America
ReplyDeleteEvidently "Presidenting while Black" is just another manifestation of Identity Politics.
Or the North Platte River--"a mile wide, and an inch deep"
ReplyDeleteBut AC/DC made it famous.
ReplyDeleteI want to sing "Wir Fahren Gegen Teabaggers" mit diesen Commenten.
ReplyDeleteSlightly OT, but "God" hosts Through The Wormhole (heh). The promos started with his stentorian voice saying "I, like you, am fascinated by. . ." and I always changed the words to "cashing checks from the Discovery Channel"
ReplyDeleteI would like to travel to a distant world with this comment and have a big PG-rated adventure, as soon as the MALP lets us know it's safe.
ReplyDeleteThe net result of the new racialism is an impossible situation of establishing one's racial fides only by permanent support for Barack Obama
ReplyDeleteI went to the trouble of digging out an incomplete list of VDH Fideism, concentrating on the 2008 occurrences. It's as bad as Jonah's incessant allusions to the "thumbless grasp" of others. Do you think he knows he’s doing that? Maybe it’s a nervous tic or something.
The first two are targetted at Hillary Clinton, when she was seen as the Democratic front-runner and therefore the person to accuse of reliance upon (and indebtedness to) the monolithic AA voting bloc. Then Obama became the front-runner and the rhetorical artillery were aimed at the new target. If you believe VDH, Obama was playing the race card even before he entered national politics. VDH also likes to remind his readers that it's the AA voting bloc who are racists, for voting for Obama, although white people who voted for his opponents cannot be accused of Identity Politics because reasons. Also, Chicago.
"Racial fides" is evidently a singular noun, apart from one case where the verb is plural.
The other point of note is how often VDH uses "de facto", whenever he accuses Obama of some crime which he has not committed in any evidential, de jure fashion.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan 14, 2008 - ... Bill obviously think that they've so cemented the issue of the Clintons as our first Black Presidents that their racial fides is above suspicion.
Jan 18, 2008 - Even the famed Clinton racial fides is now being questioned, as she resorts, albeit in convoluted similes to Martin Luther King, to playing the ...
Mar 14, 2008 - ... sermons against “rich white people” and the “g-d d—-d America” (in hopes of solidifying his racial fides in regional Chicago politics?)
Mar 15, 2008 - He obviously either doesn't fully grasp the degree to which his ... or he is so indebted to Wright for providing him the requisite racial fides to start his career
Mar 23, 2008 (for PJMedia) - (2) Does one's racial fides become suspect the more wealthy and successful one becomes—and thus requires periodic proof of authenticity in ...
Apr 29, 2008 - Moreover, Obama's de facto original embrace of Wright — in a Faustian exchange for the racial fides that jump-started his Chicago campaigns ...
Jun 11, 2008 - ... community radically increased, as his racial fides was strengthened; and former 60% margins consistently peaked at 90% and above. So too ...
Jul 15, 2008 - Now that it is no longer a question of establishing one's racial fides in Chicago, but rather of winning hearts and minds in fly-over America, ...
Aug 4, 2008 - Obama's 90% majority of African-American base voters long ago accepted his racial fides thanks to Rev Wright, rappers, and all the rest.
Dec 18 2008... Oh, he insisted his choice had nothing to do with racial fides or solidarity, but almost immediately following the election, offered a sermon on reaching out to ...
May 31, 2009 - ... popular culture of the last three decades in which intermarriage, assimilation, and integration have challenged the notion of racial fides itself.
Dec 23, 2012 - ... not run by focusing on their racial fides, and unlike the racially fixated Wagner
But the previous President inserting himself into one family's private medical concerns to the point that he was proposing new laws just so that he'd have the authority to fuck around in their affairs?
ReplyDeleteHanson's principles were handed down to him from the dawn of Western Civilization, but they seem to conk out for a few years at a time here and there.
I prefer to think of myself as a nice pimp. Word has it the job comes with a pretty nice car.
ReplyDeleteBeware the fides of March...
ReplyDeleteSign me up for the Ooogaboogaabteilungsmann!!
ReplyDeleteWhich is kinda funny because "de facto" means "actual" or "in fact." And it is usually used in contrast to "de jure" (which means "by law" or "legal") As in "de jure segregation has ended, but not de facto segregation," or "the Taliban was the de facto, not the de jure, government of Afghanistan."
ReplyDeleteSo, what does it mean to say that Obama "weighed in... de facto against George Zimmerman, a defendant in the Trayvon Martin shooting?" Did he weigh in against Zimmerman, or didn't he? If he did, why say "de facto?" Its not as there is a "de jure" way that Obama could have weighed in against Zimmerman to distinguish it from. And if Obama did not so weigh in, then he didn't, and the de facto means nothing at all. It's like saying, "Joe Schmoe de facto went to the supermarket." JS either went or he didn't. "De facto" simply doesn't enter it.
The best I can do for VDH is that maybe he means what Obama said can be construed as weighing in against Zimmerman, or amounts to weighing in against him, or approximated that, Or,, as smut clyde says, it is (somehow) "as if" he did so. Or some such thing. But that still distorts what de facto means.
Shouldn't a classics professor sorta know better?
Also, and now I am entering the realm of pettifogging quibbling, but, screw it, were there any other defendants in the Trayvon Martin shooting? If not, what's with this "a defendant" stuff? Wasn't Zimmerman "the defendant" (eventually), as in the only defendant, in that shooting?
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ReplyDeleteIndeed
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"Racial faith"? Faith in what?
ReplyDelete"Fidelity" is my guess. Or it would be if it made any sense. Maybe it's just VDH's way of bragging that he passed Latin. Or maybe it's his Latinoid contraction of "racialist bona fides", or, if he's using the English version, of "racialist cred". Then again, why try this hard to figure out what's going on in a racist fuckhead's mind? I'll stop now.
The Google reveals that VDH uses the 'de facto" construction. A lot. As a term of art, roughly translatable as "Dico ergo est", at points where he is vaguely aware of making a far-fetched claim which really needs to be backed up by evidence or arguments.
ReplyDeleteI find myself raising my voice in a chorus of Doucheland Doucheland Ueber Alles.
ReplyDeleteYou must admit, casting him as Luther was a well directed gybe.
ReplyDeleteOne fathom down and one foot more, in sunken wrecks are found /
ReplyDeleteThe bones of brave and fearless men the Erie Canal has drowned...
That incident damn near derailed Bush's presidency, making him look very weak to the point that the neocons almost turned on him. The only thing that saved him was the post-9/11 march to war. Funny thing is that almost no one in this country remembers this, whereas people in the PRC still make fun of Bush to this day.
ReplyDeleteI'd suggest that a lot of these guys' would agree to sum up their
ReplyDeletethoughts on race with the statement "They vote, so we're equal, and I
think that's as it should be."
Except that VDH's ilk try to keep blacks from voting, so even that's not really the crux of the matter.
If Iran-Contra had happened during Reagan's term, the Democrats…wait a minute!
ReplyDeleteSo, de facto means "in fact," But when VDH uses it, it means not in fact but something like "arguably" or "could be" or "not proven not to be?" It is like the common misuse of "literally," in that not only is the Latin scholar misusing the term, but he is using it to mean the opposite of what it really does mean.
ReplyDeleteThis painting hangs in the White House now
ReplyDeleteOne reason the Right in America so loved Norman Rockwell (and so many on the left wrongly loathed him) was that for decades he painted what the Saturday Evening Post's advertisers would put up with. After he quit the SEP, he painted this one for Look.
Thanks for this comment, it really resonated with something I've been thinking about a lot lately: how indifference is really the highest rung of social privilege. I see it a lot in the (west coast) tech world, where if you walk into a meeting with a guy in a suit and a guy in a hoodie, you know it ain't the guy in the suit signing the front of the paycheck.
ReplyDeleteThe old equation used to be, shuck and jive for us, and if you generally act like A Tribute to Your Race and are a Class Act, or do that race shit but in a way that keeps the darks and the whites separate -- the entertainer acting like a benevolent guide to a foreign land, handing out temporary ghetto passes and letting white audiences see another culture from the safety of a tour bus covered in bulletproof and soundproof glass where the passengers can gawk and shout racial epithets without fear of consequence -- you're OK.
The Chris Rock "niggers vs. black people" bit is a perfect example. It provides a safe, socially acceptable vehicle for write people to laugh at uneducated and poor black people. How is it racist for me to say "nigger" if I'm just quoting a Chris Rock bit? (I suppose a lot of "redneck"/"white trash" humor operates in the same vein.)
There have always been two types of racism in American society -- the "high but not too close" variety (getting rich by doing Black People Shit is OK, just don't join our country clubs), and the "close but not too high" variety (doing White People shit is OK, just don't forget you're a tokenized Tribute to Your Race, not like those scary others.)
But what happens when black people want to be high and close -- they move beyond being commercially successful and start doing weird rich people shit? When they make enough scratch to cross that line from "he's a crazy" to "he's eccentric"?
What bothers him is black people reaching a level of success that they can be boring, or weird, that they can do what they want even if it isn't about entertaining white audiences. That indifference he clearly finds racially divisive. And he damn well should. And I think he's right to blame Obama for it. The scariest thing about him is that he isn't Malcolm X, or even Jesse Jackson in '88, he's a boring old centrist in mom jeans.
And it cuts both ways. How much less criticism would Obama get from the left if he still gave those black preacher style stump speeches, cranked out a memoir of the "what it was like back in the ghetto, where I lost a lot of homies" variety, or basically told his supporters, "sorry shit's fucked up, but you know what assholes those ignorant southern redneck white trash motherfuckers can be"? I think a lot of lefty criticism of Obama stems from the fact that isn't concerned with being America's Cool Black Friend anymore.
There's also a parallel for the contempt for Lena Dunham and 3rd wave feminism in general -- a straight woman who clearly ain't give a shit what you think is boner-threatening in a way that a butch lesbian wouldn't be. And gay rights -- it's fine if you wanna flamboyantly gay it up over in gay town, but don't you dare start acting like boring, regular folks. Boringness and indifference are powerful marks of privilege. What's scary isn't marginalized groups fighting for more rights, what's scary is them achieving it.
VDH describes Zimmerman as a "defendant" in the Trayvon Martin shooting, but when Obama spoke, I believe Zimmerman was not yet a defendant. That was the root of the whole controversy.
ReplyDeleteA man hear's what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
ReplyDeleteGromet this is so good I just want to compliment it without any jokes.
ReplyDeleteWell but I think we can know from reports--like the White Republican who got removed from office after he was interviewed on the Daily Show and also the entire AZ party--that they really don't think of themselves of keeping blacks qua blacks from voting. They think they are keeping "lazy democrats who can't be bothered to drive or have ID or be free to vote on Tuesdays" from going to the polls. So thats ok, then. They've dissipated their specific hatred of black people into a general pool of dislike for working class or poor democratic voters and they are more than satisfied with policies which disenfranchise everyone. If white democrats aren't going to vote with the Republicans on the basis of race or of policy preference then fuck 'em too. And if there were a Hermann Cain and he wants to vote Republican well, they welcome him into the party. Just as long as he doesn't try to take over and run the place.
ReplyDeleteSo during the umpteen elections when AA voters have voted for a white candidate--presumably those who voted for Reagan, Bush, and McCain are also guilty of this--they were always voting for a candidate who had in some sense "proved his racial fides" to blackity blackness even when that person was so white his skin couldn't be told from the color of the sheets he was wearing? Because up until Obama (if you don't count Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton) the chances for an AA voter to ever vote for an actual black candidate were 0 since reconstruction ended.
ReplyDeleteSemper racially fi, man, semper racially fi.
ReplyDeleteI guess the useful idiots think that, you're right. But such strategies (voter disenfranchisement) have to be directed by intelligent strategic minds.
ReplyDeleteI've heard it all my life. The way I have heard it is: "I'm not prejudiced, but these are the facts about those people!" You know, the facts about the 'differences' between the "races".
ReplyDelete"Gromet this is so good I just want to compliment it without any jokes."
ReplyDeleteWhy risk a downvote? Give the people what they want!
President Obama doesn't have health insurance? He brought that skin into the White House without even seeking treatment for it! Surely that tells you all you need to know. Plus: HAS OBAMA EVER APOLOGIZED FOR WHAT THEY DO? Don't you think that if Obama acknowledged and apologized for it, that would go a long way towards ameliorating tension?
ReplyDeleteMy Daddy always told me: "In this world, son, you are either an exacerbater or an ameliorater, it's up to you!"
Most of the time I think that the modern Republican party can plan on disenfranchising people by zip code and consumption habits as successfully as by race. I mean: the object from the point of view of the leaders of the party is to disenfranchise anyone who may vote against them, for any reason. Whether its minorities by race or women who want health care coverage/the welfare state. Just as they used the poll tax and literacy tests to discourage all poor people from voting, but waived them where they could be sure that poor whites would vote for their white overlords.
ReplyDeleteSometimes racism is the goal--because it keeps the racist white voter happy that their leadership has not succumbed to the seductive black lure of modernity or jazz or sex or those saggy pants. But sometimes race is just a proxy for "doesn't vote for us" and they are pretty determined to keep "people who don't drink whiskey or own guns and subscribe to field and stream" from voting too.
Maybe he'd like the new Golden Dawn lit Greece?
ReplyDeleteWow. That really gives me a lot to think about. A whole lot. I really want to joina conversation with this comment and listen all night to what it has to say.
ReplyDeleteI guess one thing it makes me think is how terrified VDH and a lot of white people are that there could be arenas, like the white house, where a lot of black people, or women, get together and talk about what they want to do politically and they don't seem to need permission from some white person or some man to do it. I'm trying to think of a good example of this--Neill deGrasse Tyson, maybe? Obama appointing Eric Holder? Obama's acting like he doesn't have to be the only token black in a Democratic "race hustle" but in fact there are lots of blacks, and even women, who can just fill the same seats that the old wise white guys used to fill. I think thats kind of shocking to the Republicans. Despite all the race baiting and the accusations of race hustling they really, really, really, believed that AA voters and political actors were just "tokens" on a "Democratic Plantation" not potentially real actors with real agendas that they would pursue, like the Irish before them, through Democratic politics.
Yep. In his two March 2008 columns, VDH literally accuses AA voters of being racists because they might vote for Ms Clinton.
ReplyDeleteAs Roy says in the original post, "he rises from senescence to insanity".
That's where he's *getting* the source material, so all he needs is a headlight.
ReplyDeleteThis comment perfectly describes my thought process during the ill-advised several minutes I spent trying to understand VDH's sentence on a deeper level than its obvious gibbering racist paranoia.
ReplyDeleteCome for the snark, stay for the discourse analytics. Gawd, I love this blog...
ReplyDelete(I know, old thread. I'm slow.)
ReplyDeleteOnce, soothsays Hanson, you could criticize Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzalez without being accused of racism.
Actually, one can criticize Obama without being accused of racism: the trick is to criticize his actual words and deeds rather than oogabooga strawman bullshit. I also recall some amount of "See? Liberals are racist!" as a preferred response to legit criticism of those three's words and deeds (similar accusations of sexism directed at anyone who accurately pointed out that Sarah Palin is a moron).
Powell, Rice, and Gonzalez share with Obama the characteristic of belonging to racial minorities. It just occurred to me: you know one characteristic they all shared that Obama does not have and hasn't for many years? A white male boss. One who can and will fire their asses if they screw up or embarrass him. And two of them did get fired: Powell for being insufficiently obedient and Gonzalez for being just obedient enough to take the blame for the US Attorney scandal.
But Obama doesn't work for The Man, he IS The Man, and that drives them nuts.
I guess they never actually read the book, then, because Rue is black.
ReplyDeleteThe PRC's first step will be to dump a couple of billion of treasuries.
ReplyDeleteyou can't expect military historian Victor Davis Hanson to actually know or understand any military history more recent than 250BCE
ReplyDeletehttp://fxvn.superforum.pro/
One thing I have learned in the last 5 years is that idiots arguing for the removal of Barack Obama from US politics like to use Latin phrases. They think it makes them look educated and knowledgeable, the phrases are especially popular with armchair would-be lawyers Making Sh1t Up. The fact that most of the time they have no idea what the Latin phrase actually means is one of those pettifogging little details that, well, only Libruls, Obots and Terrists would worry about. The abuse of "de facto" is a common rhetorical device deployed by GOP partisans and other more extreme wackaloons.
ReplyDeleteHoly Smokes! That phrase from your Dad contained one word with 5 syllabubbles and 1 word with 6 syllabubbles. There is no way on Gods Green Earth that you could even get some of the twits out there to pronounce either one of those words.
ReplyDelete